Mixed-signal solutions for Aud
www.akm.com
AKM People and Facilities
Design and Development
This is the starting point for AKM’s acclaimed mixed-signal
ASSP’s, incorporating innovative AKM circuits and taking
advantage of AKM’s unique fabrication capabilities. The design
center itself is known for its atmosphere of free-flowing creativity,
unrestrained by conventional preconceptions, and for its wealth
of experience and know-how gained in the course of constant
breakthroughs made in over 500 unique designs.
The center creates core technologies in a dynamic process that
includes participation in international symposia, joint develop-
ment with overseas partners, and the fusing of AKM technology
and concepts with those
introduced from other
sources. Its fast design and
development speed and
product quality are the
result of the AKM “top-
down design” techniques
and long-standing poli-
cies such as the provision
of a workstation for every
person in the center. In both hardware and software, and in its
free atmosphere unrestricted by conventional frames of thought,
the center is now working to meet new needs and performance
levels, including systemization of higher levels of integration and
lower operating voltage and current levels.
Marketing and Sales
Technical innovation is important for meeting the diversified
demands of the end-user market. The Marketing & Sales Center
supports the planning, marketing, selling and development of new
products to meet the system needs of our customers. We conduct
business by comprehensively matching customers´ requests with
AKM´s technical strength, development cycles, and matching
cost to the market requirement. Since the foundation of AKM,
a culture of “close to customers” and “customer-based product
development” has taken root for the expansion of business
centered on application-specific standard products (ASSP’s).
Nobeoka Manufacturing Facility
The Nobeoka wafer fab, AKM’s first facility for large-scale
production, began commercial shipment of IC’s in October 1993.
Located along the Hohri River, one of the cleanest in Japan, the
plant is highly renowned as the source of a wide variety
of digital-analog mixed-signal IC’s for specialized
applications. In addition to its excellent location, it
benefits from the inherent safety and functionality in
plant design that comes from the plant engineering
expertise of a parent company with industrial chemistry at its core.
The production systems and equipment are among the world’s
most advanced, with a 0.1μm Class 1 clean room including below-
floor space for support apparatus to manufacture products which
meet the world’s highest quality standards.
With the motto, “customer satisfaction comes first”, the plant’s
staff strives to promptly meet our customers’ quality requirements
through continuous quality
improvement.
Its
corps
of highly experienced and
strongly motivated engineers
continuously work to develop
new testing techniques which
ensure the highest level of
product quality, and to develop
proprietary new production
processes to meet the market demand for high speed operation
and low power dissipation. World-leading examples include the
combination of digital-
analog CMOS and
magnetic sensors to create
an electronic compass,
and high-voltage CMOS
processes
to
enable
integration of high output
voltage buffers.
The world’s premier supplier of digital audio converter IC’s
Although this publication is focused primarily on audio and
video products, AKM also designs and markets products for the
telecommunications, networking, wireless and data storage
markets. Among these products are TCXO analog controllers,
analog front end chips for CD, laser diode controllers for
communications infrastructure, CD-RW and DVD drives and
wireless phone ICs. Visit www.akm.com for more details.
While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this
document, AKM is not responsible for any errors or misprints con-
tained herein. Please refer to the appropriate AKM datasheet for
exact chip specifications. All specifications and features subject to
change without notice. Copyright 2007, AKM Semiconductor Inc.
All rights reserved.
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